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Linkages between root traits, soil fungi and aggregate stability in tropical plant communities along a successional vegetation gradient

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Abstract

Aims

Determining which abiotic and biotic factors influence soil aggregate stability (MWD) in tropical climates is often confounded by soil type. We aimed to better understand the influence of soil physical and chemical components, vegetation and fungal abundance on MWD of a Ferralsol along a successional gradient of vegetation in New Caledonia.

Methods

Five plant communities (sedge dominated, open sclerophyllous shrubland, Arillastrum forest, Nothofagus forest and mixed rainforest) were studied. For each community, MWD, soil texture, soil organic carbon (SOC), iron (Fe) and aluminium (Al) sesquioxides, root length density (RLD), specific root length (SRL), root mass density (RMD) and fungal abundance were measured. Generalized linear models were used to predict MWD from soil and plant trait data.

Results

The best prediction of MWD combined abiotic and biotic factors. Along the gradient, Fe increased MWD, while root traits, fungal abundance and SOC modified MWD. From the sedge-dominated community to Arillastrum forest, RMD and SOC increased MWD, while between Nothofagus and mixed rainforest, it was likely that floristic composition and fungal communities influenced MWD.

Conclusions

Plant community, the intrinsic nature of Ferralsol and fungal abundance all modified MWD. However, the specific effect of microbial communities should be addressed through a metagenomics approach to elucidate microbial interactions with plant communities.

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Abbreviations

AM:

Arbuscular mycorrhiza

ECM:

Ectomycorrhizal fungi

MWD:

Mean weight diameter

PCA:

Principal Component Analysis

qPCR:

Quantitative PCR

rDNA:

Ribosomal DNA

RLD:

Root length density

RMD:

Root mass density

SRL:

Specific root length

SLA:

Specific leaf area

SOC:

Soil organic carbon

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the field staff of IAC (‘Unité SARA’): A. Bouarat, R. Guiglion, J.P. Lataï and A. Pain for their substantial assistance. We are thankful to our colleagues at IAC who gave substantial help for qPCR analyses: M. Lelièvre, K. Letellier, N. Robert, J. Soewarto and S. Gigante. We thank the US191 LAMA at IRD Nouméa who carried out the sesquioxides measurements. Fieldwork and laboratory analyses were funded by INRA, IAC and through a collaboration agreement between IAC and Société Le Nickel (agreement IAC-SLN n°DE2013-041). We thank the French Ministry of Agriculture for funding a PhD bursary (J. Demenois). Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. In memoriam: we dedicate this paper to Christian Papineau who spent a large part of his life studying Arillastrum forests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Agronomique néo-Calédonien (IAC), « Equipe Sol & Végétation » (SolVeg), BP18239, 98848 Nouméa, New Caledonia AgroParisTech, 75 005, Paris, France

    Julien Demenois

  2. Institut Agronomique néo-Calédonien (IAC), « Equipe Sol & Végétation » (SolVeg), BP18239, 98848, Nouméa, New Caledonia

    Julien Demenois, Thomas Ibanez & Fabian Carriconde

  3. University of Grenoble Alpes, Irstea, UR EMGR, 2 rue de la Papeterie, BP 76, 38402, Saint Martin-d’Hères cedex, France

    Freddy Rey

  4. Inra, Amap, Ird, Cnrs, Cirad, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Alexia Stokes

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  1. Julien Demenois
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  2. Freddy Rey
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Correspondence to Julien Demenois.

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Responsible Editor: Michael Luke McCormack.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary Fig. 1

Types of plant communities along the successional vegetation gradient from shrubland to forest. Retrocessions due to disturbances are not shown. (GIF 89 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 9522 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Non-metric dimensional scaling (NMDS) performed on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity indices for the five plant communities. S is Sedge-dominated formation; Mq is shrubland with Tristaniopsis glauca; Ag is Arillastrum forest; Na is Nothofagus forest and M is mixed rainforest. (GIF 17 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 6181 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

Spearman correlations between soil characteristics, root traits and fungal biomass. *** indicates correlations with P < 0.001 for ρ > 0.7. The size of the circle is proportional to ρ. Abbreviations are: Fe2O3: Fe sesquioxides; Al2O3: Al sesquioxides; SOC: soil organic carbon; RLD: root length density; RMD: root mass density; SRL: specific root length; FR: % of fine roots, VFR: % of very fine roots. (GIF 63 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 11360 kb)

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Demenois, J., Rey, F., Ibanez, T. et al. Linkages between root traits, soil fungi and aggregate stability in tropical plant communities along a successional vegetation gradient. Plant Soil 424, 319–334 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3529-x

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